Extract Brew Questions

Lovely Bloke

I've looked at a few videos, and read the guide on Beoir, but I want to make sure I have this correct.

I think these steps are correct.

• 10 litres of water in pot
• Speciality grain into muslin bag, and into water
• heat to just about boiling, turn off heat, remove bag of grain
• Add DME
• Bring to the Boil
• Add hops, time for an hour - keep on the boil
• Add more hops as per recipe at time specified into boil
• Chill the wort
• add to cold water
• pitch yeast.

What is "sparging"? and when is it done?

John_C

That's about right. The only point to keep an eye on is the temperature of the water with the grains in it. It'll give a bad flavour if it gets too close to boiling.
I usually add a kettle of boiling water to the pot and then another kettle full of cold water. That'll give you about 60 degrees which is plenty hot for steeping the grains. Leave them there for about 10 mins and then fill the pot up the rest of the way and set it boiling.

Sparging is running some more hot water over the grain bag when you take it out, to get a bit more flavour from it. I wouldn't bother with it, it's not really necessary.

Edit: One other point, most people add about half of the dme at the start of the boil and the other half near the end. You'll get better flavour from the hops that way and the DME can scorch in the pot if the boil is too thick.

Devi

Had a few questions myself last week, might help you out.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056916873

By the way, racked my first extract brew to secondary last night and had a taste, way way nicer than kits, even at this stage, a bit more work but well worth it.

fobster

When I'm steeping grain, I do so in a separate pot on the cooker using a water ratio of 1kg of grain to 4 litres of water. I heat the water and the grain together, no bag, stirring to soak all the grain and to avoid overheating. I heat this mixture to ~70c and then cover tightly with a lid and wrap a few towels around it.

Set this aside for 30 minutes. When ready pour through a fine sieve into your main brewpot. No need to sparge but press the grain with a large spoon to get a bit more out of it.

irish_goat

fobster wrote: »

No need to sparge but press the grain with a large spoon to get a bit more out of it.

Don't do this. You'll extract a load of bitter tannins from the grain husks, which is not what you want.

Lovely Bloke

I dry hopped my extract brew last night - for bottling next Saturday - should I expect any hop odours?

Devi

I dry hopped a batch last week and got lovely odours after a few days, plus more airlock activity which was a bit mad.

Drinking my first extract brew now (basic APA with cascade hops), this one is not dry hopped, only been in the bottle about 3 weeks but its going down nicely.